Lumia 1520 beats iPhone 5s in Memory benchmark test, but just misses on the overall win

Lumia versus Lumia and Windows Phone against the iPhone in our benchmark matchup

Benchmarks don’t mean much to the average consumer, but they’re a fun way for us to compare and stack different handsets.

Earlier today Basemark OS II launched on Windows Phone, a benchmarking application for Windows Phone. We’ve had a few other benchmark apps in the Windows Phone Store before, but this one also has apps on Android and iOS. We thought it would be fun to run the test on all the Windows Phone devices we have in our possession, in addition to an Apple iPhone 5s for comparison.

How does a Lumia 1020 fair up against a Lumia 925? Does that extra bit of RAM in the new Lumia 525 really matter against the Lumia 520? And how fast is a Lumia 1520? Read on to find out!

Lumia 520 and Lumia 525 Benchmark

How does an extra 512 MB of RAM matter for benchmarks? We put the 512 MB Lumia 520 with its 1 GHz CPU up against the updated Lumia 525 and its 1 GB of RAM (same CPU) to find out.

As expected, that extra bit of RAM improves performance, especially when it comes to running graphics. That shouldn't be a surprise for those wanting to run games on their Lumia 520, as clearly the lack of RAM hurts it in gaming. Now you can see why new games aren't optimized for 512 MB devices, as that reduction in RAM is a bottleneck. Still, the difference is modest, meaning the everyday experience shouldn't be too drastic.

Lumia 520 and Lumia 525 Camera test

Lumia 1320 and Samsung ATIV S Benchmark

On paper, the giant six-inch Lumia 1320 and the more modest ATIV S seem very different, but in the benchmarks, the Lumia 1320 is only a hair faster with improved 'System' performance. That's most likely due to its CPU, which is clocked slightly higher (1.7 GHz versus 1.5 GHz on the ATIV S).

Lumia 1320 and Samsung ATIV S Camera test

Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020 Benchmark

Once again, the Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020 are very similar in specs (putting aside that whopping camera found on the Lumia 1020). But one area of difference? The Lumia 1020 has 1 GB more of RAM. As a result, it narrowly beats out the Lumia 925, though the lead is modest, borderline negligible, to say the least.

Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020 Camera test

In case you needed proof that the massive Lumia 1020 camera does slow things down when compared to the Lumia 925, here you go.

iPhone 5s and Lumia 1520 Benchmark

Apples, meet oranges. While the Lumia 1520 and Apple iPhone 5s are altogether different for hardware and their OS, how that hardware performs is of concern here. The 5s famously sports a custom, 64-bit A7 processor, which is up against the Lumia 1520's cutting edge quad-core Snapdragon 800, clocked at 2.2 GHz. No surprise then to see Apple handily crush the Lumia 1520 in terms of raw System performance.

Interestingly, the Lumia 1520 bests the iPhone 5s in the Memory department, with 3x the score. As a result, the Overall scores are similar between the two flagship phones, but you have to give the ultimate win to Apple, who narrowly edged out the Lumia 1520 (999 versus 897).

iPphone 5s and Lumia 1520 Camera test

The Lumia 1520 certainly benefits from the Snapdragon 800 with a much improved camera over the Lumia 1020--at least in terms of raw speed. It can't catch the super nimble 5s though with its 97 rank, putting it well ahead of the Lumia 1520. But hey, 20 MP versus 8 MP matters too.

Wrapping it up

What do we learn from these benchmark tests? More RAM becomes an issue for Windows Phone when it's below 1 GB. While 2 GB also helps, its gains over 1 GB devices are modest. We also can see just how much better a quad-core Snapdragon 800, clocked at 2.2 GHz can help the OS become faster and faster--even for the camera. Clearly, the Lumia 1020 could have benefited from this newer chipset. There's always next time, Nokia!

Say what you will about Apple, but they do hardware right, going so far as to have their very own silicon for their iPhones. It pays off for system speed, but it looks like their memory architecture could be optimized a bit. At the end of the day though, it performs nearly on par with the Lumia 1520.

Finally, we need to keep in mind that a phone may score higher or lower than another, but at the end of the day that’s no indication of how it’ll behave in real-world use. Windows Phone is clearly a mobile-optimized OS and it will only get better as newer hardware options come online.

Editor's note: although all apps were closed when running the benchmarks, due to various uncontrollable factors on each device, we expect there to be some variation between your results and ours. But the overall trend should be spot on.

Well, is up to individual preferences when comes to OSes. I have friends not liking WP live tiles and metro too. And true to the auto focusing of Nokia camera. I have hard time focusing on foreground objects when in dim environments.

Agree with you 100%,i am the owner of an Iphone 5 and a lumia 820, and i really prefer the Iphone,so if apple comes out with a bigger screen,the lumia 820 will leave immediatly,there is especialy one thing that i hate of the Lumia,it's the price going down so fast,i've had it for 10 months and it's had a price fall of 40% since i got it,the Iphone has droped 15% and only because the 5S came out otherwise it would have kept better value.(price drops are common to samsung too)so if you want value for your money,get an Apple !!

Perhaps but being as though I was hanging in New Orleans over the holidays with both my 1520 and 920 taking pictures just as the sunset and into night.. (Though I only used the 1520 since I just got it). My friend put his iPhone away and sad you just take the pictures. Of course he still took pictures later. But no comparison between the two. Although his didn't look awful. Same results yesterday while at the park with another friend who loves taking pictures with his 5s. It is waaay too small though.

To be exact, it's the screen resolution that should matter in that case. The screen size should be irrelevant. The iPhone 5S has 1136 x 640 pixels vs Lumia 1520 at 1920 x 1080. Yeah, a lot more pixels to fill. :)

Really like what you said here, unfortunatelly i did read an article about MS plans for hardwar after finalizing Nokia's deal.. i'm afraid they won't keep the great work and effor Nokia managed to do with Lumia hardware designes and color portoflio....

i also have to agree that Apple make a great hardware despite the screen size for their iphone. but when i hold my lumia 925 i totally feel in love with how it was shaped and designed.

We needed a great smartphone in a budget and Windows phones are proving. If Windows phone didnt exist I would have been stil using my small blackberry device. I started hating droid since its birth, I used to like iOS a lot, but loved Windows phone.

These kind of things does not matter to me and i don't think many consumers care anymore. I love my 920 to death. I won't put this phone down in atleast 1.5 years...

May i add that the 920 is the first phone in my whole life that i think is perfect in every single aspect. I have NOTIHING to complain on. I will write Nokia(or Nokia team in MSFT) a love letter because of this phone. :)

I might add that i will write a love letter to the Nokia team, this phone has soul. It feels like a person, it feels like a life companion there to help you trough your day more than a thing to play on and check the time. I honestly can't let it out of my sight sometimes...

Sometimes i just find myself just stareing at the home screen becase i can't let go of how totaly amazing this phone is.

The majority of consumers don't give a rats azz because they have no clue what it means. All they know is their buying a great phone and that everyone has it. To the minority tech sites and and techies, every ounce of juice matters. They will have an explosive diarrhea if there's a 0.1sec lag.

I am exactly on the same boat there. I have never felt more content with my cell phone until I own my current Nokia Lumia 920. In fact, I still am so content that all the new phones Nokia has launched so far have not gained my interest that much, not even the 1020 or 1520. 1020 is basically a similarly-speced 920 with a much better camera, and 1520 is just way too big.

I am still waiting for the true next iteration of Nokia Lumia 920, with better internals and camera, thinner and lighter body, and 4.5" - 5" screen size. Lumia 930, maybe? :)

By 'sensitivity' the OP might have meant response time. The iPhone does have a faster response time. I don't remember the link to the video that showed the results and demonstrated how a small time lag was actually noticeable. IIRC, the iPhone response time was about half of the Lumia.

Definitely. iOS is also very clever about how they make transitions and give the impression of making things happen fast. That's not a bad thing, it's very frustrating when NOTHING happens and you don't know if you clicked or not.

Well, I don't think I can agree with you that the iPhone beats all the smartphones in touch screen sensitivity?! How? Ecosystem, yes, overall system performance yes = same company made hardware and OS resulting in excellent performance and well integrated firmware but touch screen sensitivity, absolutely NO!

Tell me something. Is it difficult to walk around with such a massive phone. Does it struggle to fit in to your pocket? Would you rather have a smaller, more portable phone? Or is the huge screen completely worth it?

There is a period of adjustment, but after about a week or so you're able to use it without holding it awkwardly. Fits in all my pockets so far, and I wouldn't trade the screen for anything anymore! I can even type with just one hand.

I would have liked to see better scores for the 1020, but I wouldn't trade it in for any other phone currently available. As mentioned by the author, the speed of the hardware is but one consideration for overall value.

Daniel would it not be much more usefull if the benchmark did take the different OS's into account, meaning how efficient they are at fully utilizing the hardware at hand. I'm not sure if that is feasible, but am just throwing the idea out there. After all it is pretty meaningless if one phone has a higher score than another but, due to lack of software optimisization, still runs slowers when performing one or more tasks.

the system score between wp8 and IOS says it all
as much as i love wp
yes its smooth, but its also slooooow
resuming the apps, opening the apps, they all take too damn long compared to ios
i was really hoping for speed improvements above "features" in wp8.1

Numbers are always cool. But does it have any meaning? I remember the days benchmarks where made to favor specific hardware. Think crunch benchmarks, where some benchmark could run the test on some hardware in cache.

I absolutely love Windows Phone for what it is. But I'll have to admit it falls short in terms of features compared to other os. At least the hardware side of things has improved by a lot. The OS still needs to iron out its shortcomings and introduce more useful features.
It's been over a year since wp8 came out, but we need more changes beyond cortana, notification center. App isn't a problem for me. They are coming and wp isn't losing momentum anytime soon.
IOS and android changes at a rapid pace and Microsoft needs to speed up. Nokia has contributed more to the os than Microsoft did for the past year.
When it comes to iPhone, I'll give it a second look when it has a larger hardware and less cartoonish UI.

What "rapid pace" is the iphone evolving at? how long did it take for io7 to come out? and in the end it came out full of bugs and far from optimised. Android is the only one that now seems to be updated quite regularly, even if only a few devices get these updates.

I find this article rather amusing. The iPhone 5s is the most powerful iPhone to date, & Apple touts it as the best smartphone on the market, yet people don't realize that Apple is paying Nokia royalties for using their patents.....hmmm, good one, Apple.

I don't care a bit about the 5S in this. What SHOULD have been put to the test were Android devices, namely the One and S4. They run on the same chips as their Windows Phone rivals (save for the Exynos-powered S4 variants). I'd like to see how the Android devices compare to he Windows Phone ones when the hardware is on a level playing field.

Yes, the One runs on Snapdragon 600 but GSM Arena lists the S4 as running Snapdragon 800 but Phone Arena has it with Snapdragon 600. Other phones that run on Snapdragon 800 are the LG G2 and the Note 3 (although some run on Exynos 5). But I think a benchmark comparison has already been done on the phones that run on this Qualcomm chipset but can't recall where I saw it. I remember distinctly the 1520 beat the Note 3, and G2 in that benchmark comparison.

Daniel before posting this piece I think you should have done at least 3 tests on each phone and get the average of the three, since its clear that results vary quite a bit, with many people getting scores with the 1520 higher than the iphone 5s.

So this confirms my theory that GDR3 is not optimized for the snapdragon 800. It's interesting to note that the Lumia 1520 scores 1000 System score while a GS4 with snapdragon 600 scores 1134 (on my friend's phone). Windows Phone is a highly optimized operating system and the fact that it's processing slower than lesser specced android phones is kind of dissapointing.

Just tried with "Multibench 2"and i got a better result with my Lumia 820 compared to the graphic board that they achieved with a Lumia 1020 ! Now it makes me think,is Nokia selling us brass for gold,or are these benchmark apps just phone fuckers ?

oh the tiny iphone 5s beats the lumia 1520, sure, it got a better system score but can you really notice why? ios vs windows phone... cmon we already know which one is heavier in terms of pure usefulness that translates to hardware requirements, graphics? oh really.. a tiny apple thing running at less than 720p resolution against 1080p 60fps, that it beats the lumia graphics by ~100 points is just disappointing, and we dont even need to talk about web if that test most likely rates for having the most HTML5 features enabled

I got much more varied results. On my Lumia 521 I got between 160 to 295 (overall)... quite the difference. The ranges within the individual categories varied a lot too. Definitely wouldn't trust this very much.

Is this benchmark relevant in any way? I mean the one between the Lumia and the iPhone. For it to be relevant you'd have to be using the same application as a reference, but we're talking about two different OSs - meaning two different apps.

Are the algorithms used identical? Written in native C++ for both platforms? Or how can the scores be compared in any way?

I don't think you can. I think that cross-platform these numbers represent nothing.

Apple is great but when it comes to real life situation, i cant chose it. Its over priced. Screen is bit small and i feel like its width is not enough. Apple have best internet browser but its scrolling sucks. Apple should really change that. I like the camera of iphone 5s but I LOVE LUMIA 1020 :). Its alot slower but pictures are so beautiful on the 1020.

3 months ago i would have gone with icons ui. But that 41 mp camera attracted me and i got to use the tile system. Now i like tiles more than icons. every tile is like a widget and u can pin so many things on the start screen. Notifications are missing but Glance screen is something awesome and i think it should be copied by other oses too.

That said i know there are many flaws in wp8 too but i just cant go back to iphone or android.

I think this app result are not accurate for WP8. I tested side by side my 1520 with 5s and Note3. 5s graphic test frame rate is slow and laggy whereas both 1520 and note3 running with same CPU and gpu are silky smooth but note3 got 2x of 1520 graphic score. IPhone graphic like shit also gain higher....
Maybe this app was developed by iFaggots.

Watch how Apple will be hyping this app and results to death. Real world they are at best relative if not irrelevant though. But since when does Apple care about real world. They prefer to make you think their POV is the real world.

Benchmarks are fairly lame in this regard, an FPS test for gaming would fair better.

That being said there is no denying that the A7 chip is absolutely incredible, I'd never touch an iPhone but I wish to christ this chip would somehow make it into other devices (it never will, but still, a man can dream) or at the very least someone designs something as impressive because lets not forget, the thing is only dual core running at close to half the clock speed of the S800 and still pushes the same kind of performance.

That being said, looking around at other benchmarks and the A7 struggles with physics, like REALLY struggles. It can push graphics to the limit but it seems to really get bogged down with the cpu heavy instructions (possibly means that the key factor in the chip is its graphical performance, which could explain the low memory scores above if it's not actually handling operations as well).

I would love to see 3DMark/PCMark make their way to Windows phone, as it's probably one of the most respected benchmarking tools around.